Owner of Pearl slaying site dies

A Pakistani man who owned the property where Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered by Islamic militants died Friday, weeks after he was freed from four years of mysterious detention, his family said.

Saud Memon, 44, who was in the textile business, owned the land and shed were Pearl was slain and buried in a shallow grave by al-Qaida in January 2002.

His family says Memnon disappeared in March 2003. Human rights groups have said they suspect that he and several others were held by Pakistani intelligence agents probing Pearl's slaying.

Unidentified men left Memon outside his home in this southern port city on April 28 in very poor health, according to his brother, Mahmood Memon.

Five days after he was freed, Memon appeared in a wheelchair before the Supreme Court in Islamabad. Reporters in court said he appeared to be in very poor physical condition.

Amina Masood _ who brought a case before the court challenging the "disappearances" of terror suspects allegedly detained by Pakistani intelligence agencies _ told the reporters that Memon had allegedly been arrested during a business trip.

"I confirm that my brother died today at the Liaquat Memorial Hospital," Mahmood Memon told The Associated Press. "We don't know who had been holding him for the past more than four years, but my brother had nothing to do with al-Qaida or Daniel Pearl's murder."

At the hospital, Dr. Ali Azmat Abidi said Saud Memon died of tuberculosis and meningitis.

Investigators had said they wanted to question him to find out who had used the shed, but no police or government official ever acknowledged his arrest. He was never formally charged.

Manzoor Mughal, a senior police official leading the Pearl case, told the AP that he did not know Memon had been arrested and freed.

"I am hearing it from you that he has died in a hospital," he said.

Pakistan has convicted several men for links to Pearl's killing.

British-born militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was sentenced to death and three others were given life imprisonment.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed _ al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, who was caught in Pakistan and is now being held at the U.S. prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba _ said he personally beheaded Pearl, according to a partial Pentagon transcript of his testimony at a military tribunal.